Through the Years

In early 2014, I decided to rent a small office in downtown Lakewood, New Jersey, reasoning that working from home would never allow me to seriously grow my new business. I couldn’t afford much, just one small room in an older building, and I davened that enough projects would come in to justify the expense.

After schlepping my boxes up the rickety staircase, my first order of “business” was to scout out the neighborhood for an afternoon Minchah. When I heard there wasn’t any, I offered to host a daily minyan in my office. It was a pretty cramped space, and we barely squeezed in the small group of men from the building every day.

One of the regular attendees was Chanoch Zundel Herskowitz, director of Yeshivas Mir Yerushalayim’s US Office, which was down the hall from me. After 18 months of daily pre-Minchah small talk, we had gotten to know each other a little, and in August, 2015, Chanoch asked if I could create four videos for the Mir’s upcoming Lakewood dinner. He introduced me to Boruch Wenger of Artech Marketing, who plays a central role in many of the Mir’s projects, and together the three of us worked out a production plan.

Although Chanoch doesn’t have a background in video production, his sense of messaging is incredibly honed, and he would hold me accountable for every line in every video.